Georgia police raid opposition party HQ and arrest leader

Police in Georgia have stormed the headquarters of the country’s main opposition party and detained its leader, escalating a political crisis that has been condemned by EU and US lawmakers.

Dozens of special police officers entered the headquarters of the United National Movement on Tuesday, pushing past makeshift barricades of furniture and using pepper spray against party supporters to arrest Nika Melia, the party’s chairman.

Melia’s detention on charges of unpaid bail was ordered by a Tbilisi court last week, a ruling that prompted the resignation of the country’s prime minister who said the decision risked deepening political divisions.

The UNM has refused to acknowledge the results of October’s parliamentary election, after accusing the ruling Georgian Dream party of voting irregularities and suppressing the opposition.

The crisis has damaged Georgia’s reputation as a democratic trailblazer among post-Soviet states dominated by autocrats and political corruption. The EU and Nato have both sought strong ties with Tbilisi, seeing it as an important ally in the Black Sea region.

Lawmakers from Lithuania and the US had called on the government to suspend efforts to arrest Melia, while other European countries had urged both parties to de-escalate.

“Shocked by the scenes at UNM headquarters this morning,” Mark Clayton, the UK’s ambassador to Georgia, wrote on Twitter. “Violence and chaos in Tbilisi are the last thing Georgia needs right now. I urge all sides to act with restraint, now and in the coming days.”

More than 20 people have also been arrested at the UNM headquarters for resisting police, according to local media reports.

“Before Melia’s arrest, police officers repeatedly warned the people in his party’s office not to resist the execution of the court’s decision,” Georgia’s interior ministry said. “These warnings were not followed, and so the police had to use proportional force and special means.”

Charges against Melia stem from his participation in a 2019 protest in opposition to Georgian Dream’s decision to invite a Russian MP to chair a session of parliament. Russian influence is a sensitive topic in the country, which lost roughly a fifth of its territory in a 2008 war with Moscow-backed separatists.

Georgian Dream, which took power from UNM in 2012 and has ruled the country ever since, was founded by billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia.